Editorial Policy

These are the rules every page on this site follows. Where a rule and a nicer-sounding sentence conflict, the rule wins.

Verdict first, numbers always

Pages answer the question they are titled with in the first paragraph, in exact dollars. Every factual claim carries its source and vintage inline at the point of use — (Scorecard, June 2026), (FSA, Mar 31, 2026), (BLS, 2024) — not in a bibliography you have to hunt through. Figures we computed rather than quoted are marked "our math," with the assumptions restated in the page footer.

Claims discipline

Median outcomes describe cohorts, never individuals. We do not guarantee salaries, employment or loan-payoff timelines, and we do not give individual financial advice — money-decision pages carry a consult-a-professional note until a licensed reviewer has signed them. Balances and totals get translated into monthly payments on a stated plan and rate, so a reader compares budget lines, not abstractions. Where data is missing, the page says so: an em-dash and a footnote, never an estimate presented as fact.

Fact-checking

Before publication, an editor independently re-runs every computed figure from the raw source files — amortization tables, weighted medians, payback years. A figure that cannot be verified against its named source does not ship.

Community quotes

Real borrower and student testimony is quoted with attribution — platform, thread, date — and used as lived experience beside the data. Quotes are never counted as statistics, and we do not invent or composite them.

AI assistance

Drafts on this site are produced with AI assistance. Every number in them is verified by a human editor against the named source file before publication, and a human is accountable for every page.

Advertising separation

This site is a free, read-only information resource. It runs no program-search forms and takes no money from schools — the full funding picture is on the disclosures page. Should any revenue be added later (advertising or affiliate links), it will never influence which schools appear on a page, their order in a table, or any figure beside them: no pay-for-placement, no paid inclusion, ever. A school that pays nothing and a school that someday advertises get identical treatment in the data.

Corrections

Found a wrong number? Report it through the contact page with the URL and the figure. Confirmed errors are fixed and marked with a dated correction note; the verification process is documented in the methodology.